


made a promise, made a pact (with my fingers crossed behind my back)

by x (ordinary)



Series: 31 Days of Apex [4]
Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Death Wish, Death and Respawning, Enemies, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Obsession, Other, POV Second Person, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Reader-Insert, Unhealthy Relationships, not enemies to lovers. just enemies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:49:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25302613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ordinary/pseuds/x
Summary: You get it; he needs to settle the score. He needs the points in his favor. He needs the world to exist in the black and white way he thinks it should.Kill or be killed. Live or die trying. Do what you’re told, because the call is coming from inside the house.
Relationships: Revenant (Apex Legends)/Reader
Series: 31 Days of Apex [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1823794
Kudos: 32





	made a promise, made a pact (with my fingers crossed behind my back)

**Author's Note:**

> title from allie x - old habits die
> 
> two birds one stone; 31 days of apex AND a loose sequel. this is for day 4, prize
> 
> mind the tags!

You swing your feet from the top of the garage in fragment east, wind whipping your hair into a frenzy. There’s a storm coming-- darkened clouds already gathering on the horizon-- but they don’t form right thanks to the harvester. 

It’s funny that Hammond is so blatant about their bloodthirsty desire to become what they once were but with a squeaky clean new image. New and improved. New body but the same guts beneath the shine.

Sounds like someone else you know. 

“Hey stranger,” you say, leaving your back wide open to someone who’s perpetually eager to put a knife right between your fourth and fifth thoracic vertebra. “Long time no talk.”

Revenant scoffs in a way that would indicate a sneer from anyone with a face that could move. Not even that gaudy skull of his articulates in a way that would reveal the depths of his miserable emotions. You hear his fingers make the sound they do when they come loose; almost wet, almost organic. Simulacrum he may be, but he is more than just metal and spite.

You made sure that he had to _figure it out_.

A crack of thunder reverberates through you, and the lightning splitting the sky strikes too close for comfort. It smells like gunpowder and rubble and ozone. No blood today; the game is cancelled. 

Two fingers-- very sharp, very cruel-- run themselves along the base of your skull. The occipital bone. You know that he is contemplating pressing them upwards, to dig up and into grey matter to send your death box soaring to the ground below.

“Cocky, aren’t we?” he croons, crouching down behind you. His is a lanky shape rather than the bulk of a behemoth, but he is still seven feet tall. The steel fingers that trail down the nape of your neck are cold. “You should know better than to trust me.” 

You tilt your head upwards in a mockery of supplication. The smile painted across your face is unkind.

“I trust you to be exactly what you insist you are,” you say, eyelids shuttering to half mast. The gleam of his yellow-gold gaze is piercing in the thin, grey air. “But whose hand stayed your own?” 

He has no ability to truly heave a sharp exhale-- no lungs, no air, no flesh-- but he pantomimes it all the same. For all that he resents his existence, you wonder how much of that is towards the trappings of his feigned humanity that he cannot divest himself of.

You lay your hands across your lap, palms upwards. You feel his gaze upon them, and the memory of them turning frostbite cold as you broke something inside his chest to bring him off floods your body as surely as saliva floods your mouth. 

“Isn’t that adorable. You think you can change me? You wouldn’t be the first.” Revenant grips the back of your neck with a crushing force hard enough to elicit a much desired yelp of pain. You get it; he needs to settle the score. He needs the points in his favor. He needs the world to exist in the black and white way he thinks it should. 

Kill or be killed. Live or die trying. Do what you’re told, because the call is coming from inside the house.

You reach back to fist a hand into his scarf, arching into what should drive any sane person away. At the same time, you bring him closer to what you know he needs; the salt of your skin, the flush of your cheeks, the cold brutality of a lovely desecration of destruction.

“Aren’t I?” you ask, turning to press your forehead to his cold, carved face plate. “I don’t recall a predecessor.”

His loneliness is an amusing one; self-inflicted, self-maintained, on autopilot just as much as the rest of him. He wears his isolation like a crown; head held high, broadcasting how easy it would be to bring down something royal. He may be able to decapitate you with sharpened fingertips, but you are the looming guillotine. You both know it, and that makes the taste of it sweeter than a plum. 

His silence is accompanied by the flicker of orange-gold-black shadows, and you resist the urge to run your tongue along the crackling surface of his jaw. 

When you laugh, it echoes and is ugly. How could you care about settling the score for a game you’re not playing? You exist outside the bounds of it; it’s why he doesn’t know what to do with you. Revenant could kill you right here, right now, but it wouldn’t change anything; it might not even grant him the temporary satisfaction of a job well done. He’s chased you down this time, but you’re both well aware that next time, it’s on you. It’s like taking turns picking up the tab. 

He splays his hand across your chest, pulling you close. It is uncomfortable, being so close to unforgiving edges and unrelenting planes, but you wouldn’t have it any other way. You’ve sampled your fair share of flesh and blood, but now you’ve got an appetite for that which cannot be consumed.

Revenant moves so that he can hook his chin over your shoulder in a mockery of intimacy. He drags his claws-- as they are, essentially, claws-- down until they sit pretty at the bottom of your rib cage. You wonder how much tactile sensation he has. Can he feel the way your pulse races? Can he feel the texture of fabric and leather against his fingers?

“You know,” he says, the thrum of his voice in your ear, as he digs in hard enough to gouge through your clothing, not yet breaking skin, “all it takes is one cut.” Rev drags down, down, down until the front of your clothing is split open, revealing your chest, your belly. The cut of your hips. “Stem.” The sound of all that fabric ripping is lost in the wind, and immediately your skin raises into gooseflesh in the wake of the exposure. “To _stern_.” His touch lingers there, resting atop the waist of your pants. “...And it all spills out.”

“I do,” you breathe, and it is a promise. Your stomach clenches. “I’ll tell you what, handsome. I’ll let you have this one, free of charge. Consider it a reward for figuring out what you want, or an approximation of it.”

“Gosh.” His hand forms into that lovely, horrible little facsimile of a blade. “A gift? For little old me?” It plunges deep inside of you with the wet, sticky sound of _meat_ and you scream in agony, body seizing. He holds on real, real tight. Revenant isn’t the type to share his toys. “ _You shouldn’t have_.”

You cough and it is blood. You cough and it pushes your guts out, out, out. For all that this reeks of sadism, you know-- even in your dying throes-- that it is the opposite. Watching you die-- a mortal death, an oozing and organic death-- is closer to his dream come true than the mechanical failures that are his demise. 

You are a tool to self-harm with. You are, at best, a temporary fix-- but a fix all the same. You’ll take it, because anything that keeps him coming back to you for more, more, more is all that you want. Revenant is the whole of your desire, and you are his favorite and most hated poison pill.

So, you die. You leave him there, at the top of the garage. alone, with your deathbox as his consolation prize. Do not pass go. Try again. 

Try again. Try again. Try again.

You’ll be waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> that voice line of his. destroyed me
> 
> me: brain let's do anything productive or things that we owe  
> brain: fuck the robot  
> me:  
> brain:


End file.
